The Six Triple Eight

For today's assignment, I'm to look at The Six Triple Eight, Tyler Perry's historical drama about the eponymous World War II battalion comprised entirely of black women. A documentary with a similar title (The SixTripleEight, notice the lack of spaces) came out in 2019, so how will you know the difference? Easy: Perry's movie is only on Netflix.

Perry's screenplay, which he adapted from Kevin M. Hymel's article Fighting a Two-Front War, formally begins in Philadelphia. There, childhood sweethearts Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian) and Abram David (Gregg Sulkin) live as best as they can. Abram is deployed overseas, but he is eventually shot down. In fact, the film opens on Abram's last battle, and although his squad mates are too late to save him, they do save a letter in his pocket, now soaked with blood. 

That MacGuffin soon becomes lost in an ever-growing backlog of mail. With morale declining on both fronts, civil rights activist Mary Mcleod Bethune (Oprah Winfrey) suggests to the Roosevelts (Sam Waterston & Susan Sarandon) to dispatch the 6888 to help sort it out. A few racist officers agree, albeit with an impossible deadline of just six months to get the mail going.

Meanwhile, Lena enlists after Abram's death and is stationed with the 6888. Her commanding officer, eventual Maj. Charity Adams (Kerry Washington) isn't impressed with her lack of the right stuff. When they're shipped out, Lena tries to gain some closure, while Adams struggles to prove herself to the racist high command. They'll eventually come to an understanding as they complete their task. That's mostly it.

As you might guess from this summary, Lena and Adams get the most focus in the screenplay. Actually, Adams is pretty much the main character as she has the biggest stakes. When we first meet her, Adams is so strict that she chastises Lena for not giving her all at jumping-jacks. She starts showing her depths when she defends her troops from racist privates at a cinema. It's quite easy to sympathize with her when the high command unfairly admonishes them for slowness (multiple letters were partially eaten by rats!). Her standout scene has her stand up to the battalion's odious commanding officer General Halt (Dean Norris). It's made especially rewarding when the 6888's efforts finally bear fruit.

Meanwhile, what we see of Lena and Abram's relationship is pretty likable. He teaches her to outwit a racist bully (Sarah Helbringer), gives her the ride of her life in his car and even sings a love song off-key. It's easy to get behind Lena when she decides to enlist, and it's easier to sympathize when she struggles under her assignments. She ends up "putting a face" on the mission when she breaks down in the sorting room, which leads to a nice reconciliation with Adams. She has a decent relationship with Hugh Bell (Jay Reeves), her eventual husband, but her fellow privates are mostly lost in the shuffle. The standout among them is the rough Johnnie Mae Burton (Shanice Shantay), who takes a long while to befriend Lena.

What else can I say about it? Despite what I said earlier, it's still tense when two of the privates inadvertently drive onto an unexploded bomb and sacrifice themselves to save their two passengers.  Chaplain Clemens (Nick Harris) makes for another excellently odious villain. There's some pretty good production design for the dilapidated school the 6888 are stationed in - both before and after they renovate it - as well as for the opening battle (which is almost comparable to All Quiet on the Western Front). You'll instantly recognize the blood-soaked letter as the MacGuffin, but you'll still be decently moved by its contents. In fact, the 6888 saluting Adams, and later they themselves getting saluted, is quite emotional.

Here's where I get into a few nitpicks. Throughout the film, we're reminded of a few major stakes but rarely see anything come of it. In an early scene, they travel in what are said to be U-Boat infested waters, but after one scene of turbulent waters, they're at port in Glasglow. When Adams dresses down Halt, she realizes she bought herself a court-martial, but it's literally too late in the film to dwell on that. We do learn about the methods the 6888 use to sort the mail but rarely see most of them in action. What gives?

 My biggest nitpicks are for the epilogue, which is set to Dianne Warren's latest Oscar-nominated ballad, The Journey. The song itself is pretty good, but it's not good when the real Lena narrates about the 6888's relevance and her post-war life, only for the following text to repeat most of her bullet points! A fellow battalion member, Romay Davis, is listed as alive when she actually passed away last June (Lena herself passed away a few months earlier in January 2024). This came out on Netflix in December, so what happened?

You can probably learn a lot about The Six Triple Eight if you watch the documentary. This film, however, is a decent historical drama that's capably lead by two great protagonists. I may have some nitpicks, but it's still interesting enough to learn about the actual battalion once it ended. Give it a chance and you might be interested too. It's waiting on Netflix for your decision. And nowhere else!

That's it for now.